NEWPORT, Ky. – Before the Levee was the glitz of Newport, casinos gave this Northern Kentucky city its bright lights, as well as a reputation.
Dubbed as the first Sin City, Newport was a city full of gangsters, gambling, strip clubs and brothels.
Now, the recently formed Newport Walking Tours LLC., invites history enthusiasts to go behind the scenes and catch a glimpse into the days of prohibition, when gangsters ruled during the group's third walking tour.
Newport Gangsters: Behind The Scenes, set for Saturday, Nov. 21 from 1-3:30 p.m. is a tour which shows where business owners hid within their own buildings in underground tunnels and hideouts away from gangsters and police.
Jerome Gels, co-owner of Newport Walking Tours LLC., said that he first became interested in Newport’s colorful past when he was a kid visiting the city from his Price Hill roots every summer.
Once he was in college he read "Razzle Dazzle," Hank Messick's account of the days of organized crime in Northern Kentucky. That intrigued him. He looked up old newspaper articles and did a tremendous amount of research to learn all that he could. In fact, initially he used the book’s map of Newport’s seedy underground for the first tour he gave.
The Newport Gangsters Tour: 8 Blocks of Villainy, the group’s first tour, was a fundraiser. Gels is a teacher and raises money for his students to take service trips to Costa Rica. They use some of the proceeds for this goal. Money raised allows the group traveling to Central America, and this year, to Jamaica, to buy supplies for three schools there. (In October, the group also did a ghost tour of the city called Newport is Haunted.)
Gels said, he doesn’t want to see Newport’s history lost.
Gangsters and casinos are not only fascinating, but can also teach a city how not to repeat the past, he said.
"Lessons can be learned from Newport’s [past]."
The Cincinnati native-turned Northern Kentuckian said that he has always been "passionate about local history." And this year he, along with his sister, father and a few friends (Mac Cooley, Dave Kohake, Brad Hill, Laura Gels and Jerry Gels Sr.) decided to turn, what was at first a fundraising effort, into a business in Newport specializing in tours of Sin City.
"People are fascinated by flexible morality," he said about the people who have joined him on tours since they started in May. "[There is] no other place like Newport, so wide open about gambling—this really was Las Vegas before Las Vegas."
Behind The Scenes takes tourists into the world that was known as Sin City. The difference between this tour and the other two tours, Jerome said, is that this one allows tourists inside five buildings that were once well-known hangouts for the most infamous high rollers in the country.
The tour will showcase where the casino owners kept big money in huge, room-sized safes, including in the Yorkshire, York Street Café and Bobby Mackey’s Music World.
"This walking tour is for the hard core who are really interested," said Jerome.
For $40, attendees will hop on the tour bus and get a chance to see old tunnels and hideouts within buildings that are now restaurants, bakeries and banquet halls. Jerome said they will get to hear the stories behind the construction as well as some stories about the gangster heritage in Newport that have not been shared until now.
"This is going to be one of the most interesting tours in Kentucky."
The tour starts at Newport Syndicate’s new Gangsters Dueling Piano Bars located at 18 E. Fifth Street in Newport, just south of Newport on the Levee. Once known as Glenn Playtorium, the building has been home to a bowling alley, casino, bar, restaurant and Bingo hall said Jerome. It was built in 1951 for $700,000 and welcomed the high rollers to the casino at the back of the restaurant.
Once you walk into the newly named and renovated bar and restaurant, the tour takes you through the back rooms where illegal activity was in abundance, through doorways where people were killed and through tunnels where the owner Pete Schmidt would hide from the police or the Cleveland Syndicate. In fact, Jerome said, Schmidt "constructed the building with the idea of escape."
The casinos’ bright lights attracted not only the infamous, but also the famous.
Hollywood’s heavy-hitters like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lee Lewis and Marylyn Monroe once frequented Newport. And according to Jerome, in the ’50s, anyone of the more than 1 million who came to the Northern Kentucky city to gamble could rub elbows with celebs as well as mob bosses.
A town run by gangsters, Newport’s streets were situated with many brothels, casinos, speakeasies and strip clubs. It was one of the top spots for gaming and activities that today, would be deemed as illegal.
But one man named George Ratterman may have changed the course for Newport, maybe forever.
In 1961, the new sheriff, Sheriff Ratterman, came to town, as did airplanes. Newport used to be an easy train route from just about anywhere in the country thanks to Cincinnati’s terminal. However, Jerome said, once airplanes became the more popular mode of transportation, many high-rollers moved their money to Las Vegas and Miami, where it was warm year-round. That’s when, he said, Ratterman cleaned house.
Newport had a reputation that has since been cleaned up, but has never been forgotten.
Newport Walking Tours LLC., is in the business of never forgetting Newport’s Sin City era.
The group was recently contacted by Kentucky Tourism about a travel program for a cable network that is working on a series called "Hidden Gems of America". The station interviewed Gels via phone and he hopes to hear back from them soon. But the group also has a few other projects in the works.
The group is writing a book about the history of Sin City, as well as a documentary.
For more information visit http://www.newportgangsters.com/ or call (888) 269-9439.
